calm my voice sounded when my heart was racing a hundred miles an hour. I could feel my pulse in my throat and my ears, and my legs felt like melting gelatin. But he didn’t have to know that.
“You’ve always had that sarcastic bite, haven’t you? That’s not a dog.” Chris said, employing the boyish grin that had won me over so long ago. Studying his features through the clear visor, I scanned his face dispassionately. Once upon a time I found his chiseled jaw and straight nose appealing. But years of his angry grimace had etched themselves into his face, and I could see past the charm and straight into the soul of the beast that would take a kitchen knife and carve a straight line up my belly and chest, pretending like it was nothing.
“Trust me, Chris,” I said. “My bite is a lot worse now.”
His brows drew together, but then he chuckled and peered at the hunters at my back. “Who are your new friends? Theraxl, aren’t they? Big, tough guys.”
“They are,” I said with a nod. “One of them is mine.”
Chris choked. “What? You can’t be serious.”
“I’m as serious as a fractionated quark bomb, Chris,” I said. “You and Hackney have a lot of nerve. Setting all of us miners up for the biggest surprise of our lives. All I have to say is, fuck you.”
Chris gave me a condescending smile. “I’d be happy to. What can the incredible hulk over there give to you that I can’t?”
Smiling, I thought of everything Red gave me and refused to rise to the bait. “I’m finished here. Turn around and go back to your skimmer. And since you can see that both planets are inhabited, take IGMC with you.”
I spun on my heel but before I could take a single step, Chris had me around the throat with another gun pointed at my head.
“No one moves, or Esra gets another little brain implant,” he said.
“What about us?” Frank shouted. “Come on, Clemmins, you still owe us for that other thing!”
Chris shifted, and I saw his gun point at the HRC troops. He fired off two quick rounds, and they slumped over, dead.
Shocked, I gripped his forearm with both hands, and remembered what seemed like years ago when Hivelt had me in a similar grip. Back then I was a terrified visitor to Predator Planet. Looking at Red, he gave me a small nod, showing me his vote of confidence, and heart in my throat, I winked at him.
Dropping into dead weight, I forced Chris to lurch forward with a stumble, and I wrenched his gun arm down with a shout. Wrenching the gun out of his hand, I spun and kneed him in the groin then kicked his knee with the full force of my booted leg. I heard a distinctive crack followed by his scream. He slammed forward with a pained yell, and I threw my elbow into his back. He collapsed, and I held his gun to the axial ring at his neck while straddling him.
“I’ve spilled more blood on this planet than you ever got from me,” I said, my voice a low growl. “And every drop of it was worth more than your pathetic life.”
“You won’t shoot me,” he ground out. “You don’t have the balls.”
Popping the latches on his helmet, I ripped it off his head and tossed it. Pushing the gun’s muzzle into his neck, I leaned down and whispered in his ear. “You’re right. The blade is my weapon of choice.”
Slapping his gun onto my thigh with the Surface Adaptor, I then gripped his hair and tilted his head back, resting the knife above his Adam’s apple.
“I never took you for a cold-blooded bitch, Esra,” he said. “Not like their crazy-ass Queen when she was gutting CeCe.”
CeCe gasped, and I remembered the moment we heard BoKama reciting words from “the covenant”. “And the love of the Ikma Scabmal Kama is written upon the blade of rule.”
“You son of a bitch,” I said. He was responsible for so much pain. And somehow had been part of CeCe’s torture, as well. He’d watched the torture and done nothing. Another question came to me. On two big planets, how had he found us? Another little brain implant. My God. They implanted us with tracking devices.
Yanking his head back farther, I sneered and flared my nostrils. “What’s that smell, Chris? Did you piss yourself?”
“Esra. Honey,” he said, but his voice didn’t sound cocksure like before. It wavered.
“I’m not your honey, motherfucker,” I said. “I’m just your payback bitch.”
“No,” he whimpered.
“That cut on your neck is for CeCe,” I growled.
Sheathing my knife, I palmed his handgun and twisted my body so I could aim.
“This is for the dog.” I shot his other knee.
He screamed and flailed under me.
“You’re stronger than before,” he said between pants. “I’ll give you that.”
“I warned you about my bite,” I said. Working fast, I tied his wrists behind him with rope and then rolled him while he cussed me out and yelped in pain. I tore the front of his suit open and grabbing my trusty multi-tool, I chose the sharpest implement to draw a bead of red down his chest while he groaned. “That’s for me.”
“You deserved it, you fucking b—”
Powerful arms grabbed me, and the next thing I knew, Naraxthel had set me aside. He picked up Chris by the fabric of his flight suit and threw him several meters.
“That was for VELMA,” he said.
“How do you mean?” I asked, tilting my head.
“She likes to scan kathe,” he said. He gestured to where Chris lay moaning in the grass. “Now she may scan kathe.”
Movement caught my eye.
Chris tried to stagger to his feet.
But he never made it.
A lone rokhura had breached the tree line and walked a few paces into the glade, tracking movement. When she spied a lone figure crawling toward the creek, she inflated her throat sac in silent warning and darted forward, lunging at a stunned Chris and snapping up his body in one bite.
Chomping twice, she choked him down and nosed her way toward the creek, hot on the trail of something dead.
“Ikthe has spoken,” Raxkarax said.
Speechless, I nodded and watched until the rokhura’s tail disappeared into the trees.